Cardano (ADA) is the best-performing major cryptocurrency this week, as hype over its upcoming Vasil Hard Fork attracted traders and developers.
The token is up 24% in the past seven days, trading at $0.562. It has performed vastly better than the top-50 cryptocurrencies this week.
A slew of factors benefited ADA’s rally this week. The most prevalent of them is the Cardano blockchain opening a new Ethereum bridge, which allows users to migrate the stablecoin USDC to Cardano.
Traders also bought into ADA as it traded at near one-month lows of $0.46, representing an attractive valuation.
Whales provide the latest boost to ADA
Data from blockchain analytics firm Santiment shows that the token’s latest rally is driven by a surge in whale buying. Whale activity saw a spike on Friday, with about 160 whale wallets transacting on the chain in the span of a few hours.
This saw ADA prices surge to as high as $0.56, before easing a bit lower. ADA had peaked at $0.67 earlier in the week.
An extreme example of the last time whales accumulated on a downswing, prices jumped +28% in the span of 18 hours
-Santiment
Increased whale interest in the token may stem from positive comments by Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson.
Cardano developers at ATH, Hoskinson teases more features
Data from Github shows that development activity on Cardano hit a record high earlier this week. This coincided with a large bounce in ADA prices.
Additionally, Hoskinson also teased new features for the blockchain, which will be revealed during the Consensus conference on June 9.
Hoskinson expects development activity on the blockchain to increase ahead of the Vasil Hard Fork. The fork is widely expected to be a substantial upgrade to the blockchain, with lead developers saying it will greatly improve the experience of building on Cardano.
The fork is expected to roll out by as soon as June.
The presented content may include the personal opinion of the author and is subject to market condition. Do your market research before investing in cryptocurrencies. The author or the publication does not hold any responsibility for your personal financial loss.